Michelle emphasizes blue collar roots

[sandnsea]

"By the time the convention is over, the speakers will have used the phrase “middle class” much more than “working class.” But, last night, Michelle Obama used the phrase “working class” at least once, when she said Barack Obama “was raised by grandparents who were working class folks just like my parents, and by a single mother who struggled to pay the bills just like we did.” Earlier, she’d described her father as “a blue-collar city worker” and mentioned that her mother had stayed at home to raise her and her brother, Craig Robinson, now the men’s basketball coach at Oregon State.

Michelle Obama’s emphasis on her blue-collar roots served several purposes. It inoculates her and her husband against the Republican attacks that they’re out-of-touch elitists, in addition to Barack being a secret Muslim, Michelle being “bitter,” and both being anti-American radicals. By revealing her roots in the black working class--and rooting Barack Obama implicitly in the white working class--she refutes right-wing populist attacks that the Obamas look down on working Americans."

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/08/25/michelle-obama-s-class.aspx

[bumblebee1]

1. Only in America

can a rich person from Arizona call a couple from the south side of Chicago elitists. Then I remember: elitist- Republican for smarter and better spoken than me.

[sandnsea]

2. It's so important we squelch that now

That's why it's so important to repeat this, instead of the rubbish the right wing is spreading.

[qwlauren35]

3. It's a race thing, actually.

What McCain is REALLY saying is that all BLACK millionaires are elitists. You see, BLACK people are not supposed to be millionaires. So, if they are, they probably think they are better than "common folk", i.e. white people who aren't millionaires, and they probably refuse to live anywhere near "their own people".

Remember, it is okay/normal/accepted for white people to be millionaires. It's those BLACK millionaires you have to watch out for. They don't have anything in common with "their own people"... and they've clearly "risen above their station".

Michelle did a d*mned good job of knocking the wind out of that sail tonight. But it's another racist image that has to be eradicated: black people aren't supposed to be millionaires, aren't supposed to be Harvard trained. Michelle and Barack probably got where they are through Affirmative Action and denied some poor white kid of the opportunity, even though that white kid probably had better SAT scores.

Don't laugh. I GUARANTEE there are going to be some Americans my age (42-48) who think this way. Some of whom are Democrats.